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Wisconsin Health Secretary: ‘No Such Thing as a State-Run Exchange’

Dennis Smith directed the Medicaid program for President George W. Bush and was a health care analyst at the Heritage Foundation before becoming Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) secretary of health. The following excerpts are from a [subscription only] article at WisPolitics.com:

In his first extensive interview since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling largely upheld the federal law, the Department of Health Services chief said fed deadlines are likely to change and that the lack of guidance on setting up the exchanges makes any state-run exchange “a fantasy.”…

Part of the reason why Smith says Wisconsin hasn’t moved forward with a health exchange plan is because he believes the deadlines will be pushed back.

“We have no other plan that we are taking because we think the reality is the federal government cannot meet its deadlines for implementing PPACA,” Smith said. “No one knows what a federal exchange looks like. The two major components that an exchange is supposed to do, which is determine eligibility and to complete the business transaction to pay premiums to health care plans that millions of Americans are supposed to pick, nobody knows what those look like. The administration has failed to release a credible business plan where objective observers could conclude that they’re going to pull this off.”

Smith also said that none of the states currently setting up exchanges would likely meet federal regulations and that there’s “no such thing as a state-run exchange.”…

“They were going to be asking for the resumes for the people who sit on the board of overseeing an exchange,” Smith said. “They were micromanaging the governance structure. They didn’t have to do that, they chose to do that. But that’s slowing the process and the decision making.”

The secretary especially pointed to questions on who will be eligible for the exchanges and the appropriate level of tax credits for participants. He claimed the rules on determining accuracy of tax credit payments were too “nonchalant,” and could result in the IRS having to recover thousands of dollars because of potential inaccuracies.

“It’s not that they don’t have answers because they’re withholding it from us, it’s that they don’t have answers because they don’t have answers,” Smith said. “These are critical policy issues, critical technical issues. Again, what are you building if you don’t know who’s eligible? What are you building if you don’t know what the flow is out of the treasury to the health plan?”

…”They have a mess on their hands,” Smith said… “You have to fundamentally say, ‘No, that just isn’t working, we have to go back to the drawing board.’

“And that is not being partisan in the slightest. That is facing reality.”

And that’s from a guy who continues to support the concept of a government-created health insurance exchange.